Saturday, November 1, 2014

New York Times Upsets the ‘Bush Lied, People Died’ Narrative

How a New York Times Story Upset the ‘Bush Lied, People Died’ Narrative

Iraq’s chemical weapons are back in the news. The New York Times
reported that American troops found roughly 5,000 chemical warheads,
shells and aviation bombs since the Iraq War began. Then last week The
Washington Post reported the Islamic State terrorist group had used
chlorine gas against Iraqi police officers.
What’s going on? We’ve been told “Bush lied” about Iraq having
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Now we learn they’ve been showing up
in the thousands and are toxic enough to injure people.
The Times reporter stressed that the discovered items had been
manufactured before 1991, arguing that they shouldn’t count as evidence
of active WMD programs which the Bush administration had “claimed as an
excuse for embarking on the Iraq war.”
However the article failed to mention that the U.N. Security Council
was concerned about destroying all Iraqi chemical weapons stocks,
regardless of when they were manufactured. The discovery of these
weapons proves that Saddam Hussein failed to fulfill his disarmament
obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

And the compliance issue was at the very core of the Bush administration’s case against Iraq at the United Nations.
Saddam used chemical weapons late in the Iran-Iraq war. In March
1988, he used them against his own people, killing up to 5,000 Iraqi
Kurds. The U.N. Security Council passed numerous resolutions documenting
the legal case against Iraq over WMD. On April 3, 1991, the Security
Council passed Resolution 687, requiring Iraq to destroy all of its
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and missiles that could
deliver them. The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was
established to ensure Iraq’s compliance.
Fast-forward to 2002 and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441,
negotiated by the Bush administration. It “deplored” the fact that Iraq
still had not provided “accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure”
of its weapons programs as required by Resolution 687.
As far as the Security Council was concerned, the main legal question
was not whether Iraq’s WMD programs were active — the U.N. knew from
previous inspections that Saddam’s WMD program had created an inventory
of WMD. The question was what happened to them. The accuracy or
verifiability of the U.S. intelligence case about active WMD programs
wasn’t of primary importance to the Security Council. Rather, it was
“seized” with the issue of Iraqi compliance with many Security Council
resolutions, particularly Chapter VII ones.
Even Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations Monitoring,
Verification and Inspection Commission that followed UNSCOM, conceded as
much. He expressed frustration with Iraq’s failure to account for the
vast store of chemical and biological agents it was known to have had.
At one point Mr. Blix called the inability to verify all aspects of the
WMD program “perhaps the most important problem we are facing.”
It is understandable that the world wanted to know the reliability of
U.S. intelligence, but it should not have turned its eye away so
quickly from the central issue of Iraqi compliance with international
law. Once the war began, it was all about finding active programs — a
narrative the Bush administration inexplicably let grow. Forgotten were
all those pesky “technical” details about how “serious consequences”
would befall Iraq if Saddam did not comply with those Security Council
resolutions, which he most assuredly did not.
Which brings us back to The New York Times story. Finding stockpiles
of chemical munitions clearly didn’t mesh with the “Bush lied, people
died” narrative. The reporter seems to have seized on the 1991 date and
the secondary issue of “active” programs to explain it away.
The diplomatic record shows that the U.S. argued at the Security
Council that Saddam was in “material breach” of his obligations on
inspections. Some of the evidence provided by the U.S. of active
programs turned out to be wrong, but the context was to raise questions
about what was not known, and thus to drive home the fact that Saddam
was not meeting his obligations to the United Nations, something which
normally would matter to people who take the U.N.’s every word as
gospel.Originally appeared in The Washington Times.